Drug errors are so widespread that hospital patients should expect to suffer one every day they remain hospitalized, although error rates vary by hospital and most do not lead to injury, the report concluded.

The report, "Preventing Medication Errors," cited the death of Betsy Lehman, a 39-year-old mother of two and a health reporter for The Boston Globe, as a classic fatal drug mix-up. Ms. Lehman died in 1993 after a doctor mistakenly gave her four times the appropriate dose of a toxic drug to treat her breast cancer.

Recommendations to correct these problems include systemic changes like electronic prescribing and tips for consumers like advising patients to carry complete listings of their prescriptions to every doctor's visit, the report said.

"The incidence of medication errors was surprising even to us," said J. Lyle Bootman, dean of the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy. "The solutions are complex and far-reaching and will present challenges."

The report is the fourth in a series done by the institute, the nation's most prestigious medical advisory organization, that has called attention to the enormous health and financial burdens brought about by medical errors.

The first report, "To Err Is Human," was released in 1999 and caused a sensation when it estimated that medical errors of all sorts led to as many as 98,000 deaths each year -- more than was caused by highway accidents and breast cancer combined.

Read the NY Times Story http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/health/21drugerrors.html?ex=1153627200&en=af14b5fd984cd3a6&ei=5087%0A

Read the Report from the Institute of Medicinehttp://www.nap.edu/catalog/11623.html#toc

In reality the study reviewed more than 1,400 medical malpractice cases handled by five insurance companies over a 20-year period (from 1984 to 2004) and found that 40 percent of those lawsuits involved no medical
error."

The study also found that 27% of malpractice cases go unpaid, now how much effect is this having on our tax dollar since these people do need treatment.

As you can see from the article, in actuality "FOR 3% of the 1400 claims studied there were no verifiable medical injuries, and 37% did not involve errors. Most of the claims that were not associated with errors (370 or 515
[72%]) or injuries DID NOT result in compensation."

CONCLUSION: "Claims that lack evidence or error are not uncommon, but MOST ARE DENIED COMPENSATION. The vast majority of expenditures go toward litigation over errors and payment of them."

The Discussion goes on to note that "only a small fraction of claims lacked documented injuries" and of the Claims without merit that were filed, 1 in 4 resulted in payment. When close calls were excluded, claims without
evidence of injury or error accounted for 13% of total litigation costs.

"Our findings point toward two general conclusions. One is that portraits of a malpractice system that is stricken with frivolous litigation ARE OVERBLOWN. A second conclusion is that the malpractice system performs
reasonably well in its function of separating claims without merit from those with merit and compensating the latter. 3/4 of the litigation outcomes were concordant with the merits of the claim."

"Our findings suggest that moves to curb frivolous litigation, if successful, will have a relatively limited effect on the caseload and costs of litigation. The vast majority of resources go toward resolving and paying claims that involve errors. A higher-value target for reform than discouraging claims that do not belong in the system would be streamlining the processing of claims that do belong."